Pity the Child
by Baroness Kika
Summary: Primrose Everdeen was alive for 4,930 days. She spent parts of 5 of those days hating her sister, Katniss. Written for Prompts in Panem, R4D1.


_Day One—May 25th, 8 years old_

There was no denying that Katniss was the head of the household now that their father was dead and their mother was unreachable. It had been months since the mining accident claimed Wyatt Everdeen's life, and the light had left Malisse Everdeen's eyes in her grief. At only seven, there wasn't much Prim could do to help her sister or her mother, despite desperately wanting to help both. She polished their father's shaving mirror every day without fail, keeping his memory alive despite the black ribbon tied around the framed picture of Wyatt and Malisse on their wedding day.

Things have been steadily improving for them since the day Katniss brought home those two loaves of slightly singed bakery bread. Prim helps her collect edible roots and plants, Katniss's first tesserae arrives, and all three Everdeen women begin to slowly fill back out to be slightly less like skeletons wearing skin. But their mother is still a long, long way away.

She (sort of) comes back for one day—Prim's 8th birthday. She smiles when Katniss brings in a couple of fat squirrels from her morning hunting trip, and tries to sweeten the gritty grain bread with the tiniest bit of honey she keeps in her medical kit to soothe sore throats, since a cake will never be in the Everdeen budget. Prim finds a modicum of safety in her mother's arms; for a minute or two, Malisse is back with them, loving them the way she didn't after their father was dead and buried. She kisses her youngest daughter's cheek, and hums the song Wyatt used to sing the girls on their birthdays.

It's that noise that makes Katniss's spine stiffen so straight that Prim can see it from across the room. Malisse, however, doesn't appear to notice. After she finishes humming the birthday song into Prim's ear, their mother rounds the table and attempts to put her arms around her older daughter, perhaps in thanks for the squirrels, the millet and oil, something. But Katniss ducks and shakes her head, completely refusing their mother's embrace. And just like that, Malisse is gone again.

Katniss spends the rest of the day trying to make her sister happy, but Prim is too angry at her sister to allow her to pet and adore her. She sleeps with their mother that night because she's so angry at Katniss. Katniss, who won't allow their mother to even touch her without getting flustered and angry and vengeful. Prim can feel vengeful, too—particularly when she remembers the thing that Katniss conveniently seems to have forgotten.

They are all the others have left.

_Day Two—July 4th, 12 years old_

"Primrose Everdeen!"

Prim's feet are leaden when Effie Trinket pulls the one slip out of the Reaping ball that has her name on it. She can't breathe. She's seeing spots. Katniss promised her this couldn't possibly happen. Their mother promised her this would never happen. That's why she's never taken a tesserae, despite Katniss taking her own quota every year for the last four years. There is never such a thing as "being safe" from the Reaping—but she was as close as a child could get.

And yet here she is, walking to the stage. She wonders if she'll be able to find her mother and sister's faces in the crowd, gauge their reaction to the circumstance in advance so she'll know how strong she'll need to pretend to be when they come to wish her goodbye when she feels Katniss's arms pull her backwards behind her own body so she can step forward instead.

"I volunteer! I volunteer as Tribute!" Katniss screams.

Effie babbles something about protocol, but Mayor Undersee holds up his hand to the heavily made-up Capitolite and says to let the girl do as she wants. Prim has just a single moment to make her own move. She throws her arms around her sister's waist and begins to wail.

"No, Katniss! No! You can't go!"

"Prim, let go," Katniss sneers, attempting to unlock the fingers clutching her vibrant blue dress. Prim is unrelenting in her grasp. "Let go!"

Stronger arms pull Prim away—Gale Hawthorne has her hoisted up in his arms a second later. "Up you go, Catnip," he tells her before he sidles through the crowd with Prim thrown over his shoulder, quickly making his way towards the area where Malisse Everdeen and Hazelle Hawthorne wait with the other Seam mothers to see which of them will be mourning that evening. Malisse takes Prim in her arms and holds her tight as the entire District holds up the three fingers of their left hands out of respect for Katniss's brave act.

Prim cries and cries until she gets to see her sister one final time, crying harder when the Peacekeepers pull she and her mother out of the room and close the door between her and Katniss forever. That is when the anger kicks in.

_It should be me. It shouldn't be Katniss. This is wrong. Why couldn't you just let it be me, Katniss?_ Prim thinks bitterly as she and Malisse walk home. She falls into the bed she shares—shared—with her sister and pulls her knees up to her chest. Her tears still fall like raindrops, but they are hot and seething.

_It should be me. I hate that you wouldn't let it be me, Katniss._

* * *

_Day Three—July 29th, 12 years old_

As she watches her sister on the television screen, her hair flowing and soft around her face, the dress the color of flickering candlelight pooled around her as she practically crawls into Peeta Mellark's lap, Prim shakes her head from side to side.

"Don't…don't do it, Katniss."

Prim knows as soon as Katniss opens her mouth, everything that comes out of it will be a lie. She has seen right through her sister's ruse the second—no, the minute she'd begun pretending she had any feelings for Peeta Mellark beyond a desperate hope to bring him home. She could tell she'd grown to care for him; but caring for a friend and loving someone desperately are two very different things. Prim is only 12, and she knows that. Why is Katniss pretending like this? Why is she…leading him on? Was that the expression she'd heard someone whisper in the town square the day the Tributes of Twelve were declared the double winners? This isn't something her sister would do. Not the sister she knows.

"So now that you've me," Peeta says to Katniss, looking at her adoringly and in every way so blatantly obvious that he is a boy in love, "What are you going to do with me?"

"Put you somewhere you can't get hurt."

It's not an entirely un-Katniss sentiment. But Prim knows the place where it originates from is dishonest. She hates it when Katniss lies, if only because she never does it—not so blatantly.

And so Prim hates her sister until the television screen clicks off.

_Day Four—October 30th, 13 years old_

The purple print on her wrist indicates the time very, very clearly. 13:00—Visitation with Patient PM0615. She hasn't told Katniss, far away in District Two, that she's doing it. But it's a part of his slow, progressional rehabilitation, and few of the Twelve refugees who knew him before the hijacking are willing to do it. Malisse recommended Prim for it instead. So they're trying it.

She holds her hand on the metal screen that opens the door from the outside and nods to the guards that she'll be fine. She steps through the tertiary door that leads into Peeta's room and looks around for him. It takes her a second to see the head of matted curls on the far side of the bed. He's sitting behind it, his neck bent forward, and she might be hallucinating, but Prim can swear she hears…is he grunting? He's murmuring to himself fiercely, his voice nothing like it used to be before the Quell, and Prim has to assume he's in the middle of an episode. She hovers her hand over the panic button near the entrance that will allow her a quick escape if he tries to turn on her, but she doesn't press it.

"Fucking…fucking cunt…fucking bitch…suck it, you fucking…ow…ow!" Peeta hisses. He genuinely sounds like he's in pain, and Prim can't stomach the idea that he's hurting himself somehow and she, a healer, would leave without helping him. She rounds the bed, and tries not to gasp too loudly when she sees.

She has seen this scenario once before, but in a very different setting. Months and months ago, well before the ill-fated Victory Tour and the whirlwind Capitol engagement and the Quell, Prim used to visit Peeta in secret, but for a different reason. None of the Everdeen women felt welcome in the bakery in town, not even with Katniss's new title of Victor, unless there was some guarantee that Mrs. Mellark wouldn't be there. But without Peeta's help in the kitchens, Mrs. Mellark seemed to always be there.

Peeta's anger at Katniss didn't extend to Prim and Malisse, though. He was still kind and courteous to them when their eyes met from across the Victor's Village lawns. When Prim had approached him about trading the cheese she made from Lady's milk in return for the bread—he seemed to always be baking in his own private kitchen and had agreed without hesitation. They met on Tuesdays and Fridays before Prim had to leave for school, always at Peeta's house while Katniss was in the woods hunting; sometimes they'd even share a cup of tea if Prim had the time. She tried to make the time—she knew Peeta was lonely in that big house all by himself.

One day she'd been late for school, so she went on Wednesday morning instead of Tuesday. She'd done so once before and it hadn't been a problem for Peeta at all. She let herself into his home, as he'd told her she was free to do, and called out to him as she padded to the kitchen, only to find it empty and the oven cold. She grew worried—she thought this was how he spent all of his free time. She looked in the adjoining dining room and found nothing. The living room was just as uninhabited. She thought to go up the stairs to his bedroom, thinking perhaps he'd taken ill, but first decided to check the downstairs room that was used as an office in her own home. She wasn't sure what Peeta used it for.

As it turned out, he used it for painting. Canvases of varying levels of completion sat propped against the wall, a large, splattered drop cloth mostly covered the lush carpet, and a tall easel stood in the corner, almost completely flanked by Peeta's imposing body. Prim had been about to call out to him when she'd noticed something…off. His trousers hung low on his hips, and his right arm seemed to flex and relax in a funny way. His left arm clutched the side of the painting on his easel, and his breath was coming in short, quick gasps. Prim tiptoed further into the room until she was able to make out just enough of what he was doing for her eyes to bug out. His penis laid in his hand and he was stroking it wildly, whispering to himself with his eyes closed and his nostrils flaring. She was able to identify the subject of his painting as her sister—as she'd appeared in the Games—when the Careers had her treed. Before he noticed her presence, she quietly turned on her heel and fled his house.

She hadn't told a soul what she'd seen; not until the night of the interviews before the Quell when Peeta announced to the nation that he and Katniss were married and she was pregnant with his child. When the television screen had clicked off, a shocked Malisse Everdeen turned to her younger daughter and launched into a highly clinical and impersonal explanation of how Katniss came to be with child, if in fact that was the truth. Prim listened intently to her mother before opening her mouth to reveal what she'd accidentally caught Peeta doing months earlier. Malisse announced she had a headache and went to bed early that night.

In the present, in the bunker District that is Thirteen, Prim stands in the corner of Peeta Mellark's room, once again watching him pump himself over and over, muttering and hissing with every harsh stroke of his right hand. She doesn't mean to stare, but she doesn't think the skin of his member should be that red and raw looking. She turns away right as Peeta hisses in one final deep breath and whimpers as what she assumes is his orgasm overtakes him. She goes back to the button, hoping she can get out of the room in time for him not to have noticed her and grow even angrier when she hears his pained voice call out to her.

"P-Prim? How long have you been…?" Peeta whispers to her. Perhaps the episode is over. She's seen him enough times after an episode to know how quiet he sounds when he's coming back to himself.

"It sounded like you were hurt. Did you hurt yourself?" she replies without her eyes leaving the solid door in front of her.

"They don't have any…spit doesn't really last…Prim, I'm sorry…"

"Don't apologize. It's a natural thing, it doesn't make me uncomfortable. If…you know, it hurts, I can get the doctor…"

She hears him move behind her and the springs of his simple bed squeak under his weight. When she turns, he's sitting on his bed with his back propped up on the headboard and the blankets pulled over his lap. He's blushing and panting, wildly tugging on the hair of his temples, a sure sign that he feels like he's slipping once more and is trying to ground himself in reality. Prim decides to take the chance and tiptoes over and sits on the edge of his bed.

"Is it bad today, Peeta?" she asks him quietly.

"I fucking hate her, Prim. I fucking hate her, and I hate that I hate her…and I hate that I still…I still love her…" he mutters as hot tears begin to flow down his cheeks.

Prim knows the feeling of hating Katniss for what she's inadvertently done to this damaged boy cowering in front of her. She feels it in this moment, too.

* * *

_Day Five—December 24th, 13 years old_

Prim hates her sister for dying. She knew it was Katniss's intention all along—to go to the Capitol and meet her own death as a means of taking down President Snow and hopefully ending this war that has torn the country apart. The war that Katniss began when she poured the berries into Peeta Mellark's hand. Or maybe even earlier, when she laid flowers atop the lifeless body of Rue Turner of District Eleven. But Prim needs her sister in a way no one else in the world does. Not Peeta, not Gale, not their mother. Prim needs Katniss.

She stops hating her when the information comes out that Katniss and at least a few of the Star Squad members are thought to be alive, and still on the run somewhere in the Capitol. Maybe it isn't too late—maybe she can still help save Katniss, maybe even Gale and Peeta, too. She scurries all the way to the office of Alma Coin and bangs on the door until the Thirteen commander answers and listens to her case.

"You are too young, Miss Everdeen," Coin says with a shake of her head.

"I am more skilled than some of your other volunteers who are leaving for the Capitol today! I can help! You can…I don't know, pass it off as some clerical error that my age was in the system wrong! Please, please let me go help my sister. She needs me. She trusts me," Prim begs.

Coin bristles for a moment before her face seems to get lost in thought for a moment. A smile passes across her lips, but it seems almost…wicked? Surely that couldn't be it.

What seems like only a moment later, Prim is on a hovercraft bound for the Capitol. The commander of the unit informs them that when they set down in a few minutes in the main square, they'll be tending to wounded children that Snow appears to have put forth as his own personal human shields, and they are expected to save as many of them as possible. Prim steals herself for carnage, for cries of pain and longing, for the smell of urine and feces and burning human flesh, but it's nothing compared to what it is like to actually see the scattered body parts that were once Capitol children, and the freezing, huddled, injured children that survived the first round of explosions, wherever they had come from. She and the other medics sprint into action, and it's like being back at the dining room table with their mother when an injured miner or sick child or Gale Hawthorne and his whip lashes laid upon it in need of a miracle. Her hands and her brain know what to do independent of one another, and it feels right and correct that she is here, that she is helping. For a minute, Katniss is not the only Everdeen sister who's making a difference.

She feels her sister's eyes on her from across the square. Katniss is wearing a silly disguise and she's by herself, which seems wrong, but Prim knows it's her. All of this is because of Katniss: the good and the bad. And for a second, Prim knows that even in her darkest moments of hating her sister for whatever reason she did, she couldn't possibly hate her more than Katniss hates herself. Prim vows to never hate her sister again—her sister is a hero, whether she believes it or not.

She's about to call out Katniss's name to tell her as much when the second round of parachutes goes off.

* * *

_This story was written for Prompts in Panem, round 4, day 1 - _"Wrath".

_Special thanks for this story go to Tumblr user_ walker, _who gave me the core idea, _megsonfire, _for the word wars that got this story finished, and _Chelzie,_ for her incredible beta-ing and fact checking prowess._


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